Major changes at Zazzle

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, I've been very busy working on my three Zazzle stores.

My main store Wildmacnz which houses my clothing, household goods, greeting cards and poster designs etc. 

My business store Wildmacnzbusiness which is where I house all my business card, flexi magnets and other business related designs.

And lastly my Electronics store Wildmacnzelectronics which houses all my phone, laptop and tablet case designs.

I hadn't looked at any of these stores in nearly three years. With all the stuff going on in my personal life with my husband being laid off and then us moving house and town, I just ignored them and as is usually the way, life kept happening and things changed without me realizing. One of the major changes being that Zazzle had hidden a lot of my designs that hadn't sold, so they are no longer visible to the public. I never noticed anything as my sales were getting better over time so I just thought everything was as I left it. 

What a big surprise! But actually it was a good surprise. It took some of the pressure off me. How you ask?

Well, for a long while before my personal life took a sudden left turn, I was creating designs and then putting them on as many products as I could, that suited the design. I never used quick create, I didn't like the idea of my designs going on everything at once especially when not every image is suitable for every product. When new products were released I put all the existing images on the new products if they suited, however this didn't leave me much time for creating new designs. Just keeping up with the old ones was becoming a full time job! I started to slip further and further behind. It felt like I was trying to run up a downwards traveling escalator that was speeding up.  In short I put too much pressure on myself to create a large store, thinking that this was what I needed to do to get seen in the marketplace and get sales. I was wrong. My sales picked up even though a lot of my products were no longer visible for sale in the marketplace. I was focusing on the wrong things.

This reshuffle from Zazzle eased the pressure off me to create more and more and made me look at fine tuning what I already have. It allowed me to take a step back and really think about:

1. What I really wanted to sell in my stores. 
2. What I wanted my stores to look and feel like to a customer
3. What I enjoyed creating. I hate making some products so why am I making them?
4. Why have some of my products not sold? Wrong design for the product? Have I aimed at the wrong audience for a certain design? Is the design just old and outdated now, especially designs with the date on them?
5. Keywording and descriptions. Are they letting me down?
6. What have I sold? This was an eye opener. Some of the designs that hadn't sold were on on products I hated making. Could this be related? 
7. Do I really need three stores or should I condense down into just one or two?

These are all questions I've been slowly working through for the last few weeks as I delete crap/outdated designs and products I hate making, that haven't sold anyway, and rework my keywords and descriptions on designs I want to keep. It's a painstaking process, but one I'm very happy to do. I can see light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a lightweight streamlined store filled only with designs and products that I'm happy to make and are more likely to sell well.

This is my most popular tie. My watercolor painted scooter design on a yellow background. This scooter is also available on other colored backgrounds. My scooter sells well on multiple products so it makes the cut and will stay in my newly designed store.

The top picture is of a new wrapping paper design I created last week. Now I have time to create new designs which is the part I really enjoy doing. 

I love another new feature that Zazzle introduced whilst I wasn't looking, 

Collections. (see pic above)

Collections are a great way to showcase groups of products either by theme, product or by grouping useful things together, such as, matching birthday cards, gift wrap and envelopes for example, or matching designed cups and plates. I've only just started using this feature but I can see loads of possibilities with it.

All in all, although Zazzle has created lots of new work for me, I welcome the changes as a new beginning for my stores. As I try to simplify other areas of my life, be it creative or home life, it makes perfect sense for me to simplify my stores too. 

I hope you may find this post useful if you have a Zazzle store that you haven't looked at in a while. You may be surprised with the changes. It can be a shock, but I think it's good to take a step back from time to time and reassess what it is you really want to accomplish. Sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees.

Have a great week :) 

Passion vs work

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you ~ Oprah Winfrey

Over the past few years I've been working on understanding myself and the way I live my life. I've learned a lot about myself and my passions and one important discovery I've made is that photography and any kind of art must stay only as a hobby for me. I'm unable to split things into work images and fun things just for me. It all ends up as work.

• Then the way I think about art or photography changes 
•  My subjects change 
• How I approach a subject changes 
• The way I feel about the work changes and it sucks the fun right out of it for me. 
• I also hate self promoting stuff and managing sales, it all starts to feel like that's all that it's about and the art disappears into the distant background. 

I guess I'm trying to say that art for me has to be fun for my creative juices to flow. The stupid thing is that I knew this when I left school but it was pushed into the dark recesses of my mind and ignored. I never took art into higher study and I never attempted to turn it into a career because I knew it would become a chore and the fun would disappear. I could have taken my tech drawing classes to a higher level though. Drawing house plans and kitchen designs felt different from the art side of things. More controlled and detailed and it had to be accurate unlike art that is so much better when it is looser and flows and has your feelings and emotions in it. Maybe that's what separates it for me. Work is controlled and has constraints put on it from other people and art is free flowing and as soon as I add someone else's wants into an image or start to add a budget, promotion or any other business side effects it kills the free flow.

I wonder why it can take years of banging your head against the wall to finally learn something that you already knew from long ago? I ran my thoughts on this past my mother who is also trying to sell photographic images and she agreed with me. She told me that she hasn't taken any family photos this year at all when in the past she would have taken loads. Purely because her mind is now focused on photography as a business and the fun side has now gone. Perhaps it's a genetic thing with us?

Human nature says that when we do something there has to be something in it for us to want to continue it. A payoff if you like. When I take photos for fun I generally take more images of my family and friends and the beautiful places we have visited together. The images serve as reminders of great days and the payoff is high for me. The same happens when I paint or draw something for myself while I'm out somewhere or even at home. The art transports me back to that time and place, all the sights, sounds and smells come with it. However, when I take photos for work I'm concentrating more on technique, camera settings, best angles etc and when I look at those images those are the memories I have of that place. Memories of rushing to catch the light in the early morning, finding a great angle and then shooting and moving on before the light changes. It's a different process altogether from strolling around a lake with family on a beautiful day, laughing and enjoying everyone's company and capturing the magic moments freely as they arise.

I've had days in the past where I've gone on a family trip and when I've gotten home and looked back through the photos I've realized that I haven't taken any photos of my family while we were out. In fact some days I've realized that I've spent my day miles behind everyone else shooting things while everyone else has had fun without me! Where was the payoff on those days? The money earned from those images certainly wasn't worth the loss of interaction with my family. Perhaps part of the problem is that I don't like to take people pictures for work so if my mind is in work mode I don't shoot people including my family on a day out. Don't get me wrong, I do like to take pics of my family but I don't want to sell them so they are definitely not work.

So I was wondering how do you balance your passion vs your work? How do you switch off the work mode when you're with family or do you somehow manage to balance the two? I'd love to hear your ideas on this.

Enjoy life and travel light :)